Sending a postcard is safer than emailing says security minister

Email is a 'horrifyingly' insecure form of communication and it might be safer to send a postcard, Security Minister Lord West of Spithead has warned.

He told peers: 'Although I know people seem to think, goodness me, that the Government are a dreadful bunch, I can tell you what can be gained by all sorts of other people by looking at people's emails is horrifying.

'I am quite able to sit down, myself, and get amazing amounts of data on people in a normal, open way.

'And that is pretty frightening because people do not understand when they go on their emails, when they go on their little screens, that actually they are telling more people in the world what they are writing than if they wrote a postcard and stuck it in the mail. That's the reality.'

He was responding to warnings from Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer about proposed new methods of 'targeted on-line advertising' that respond to people's internet use.

Lord West said of such methods: 'It has been subject to investigation by the police and the Crown Prosecution Service and we are looking into this issue. I am very unhappy about it.'

The exchanges came during debate on the Data Retention (EC Directive) Regulations, which require communications service providers to retain itemised telephone and email data for 12 months for potential use in combating crime and terrorism.

A Tory motion, calling on ministers to withdraw the regulations and re-introduce them as part of a Bill, was later rejected by 93 votes to 89, a Government majority of four.